“Modern Love” Host on How the Specific Becomes Universal

Academics are often trained to lead with the argument. Anna Martin, host of The New York Times’ Modern Love podcast, leads with the story and trusts that the meaning will follow.

Modern Love explores the complicated love lives of real people. In “Let Yourself Rage,” former U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses how to experience a fuller range of emotion. In “In 24 Hours, My Whole Life Changed,” Blake Martin shares how he learned he had a serious disease within hours of finding out he’d be a father. In “Why Gossiping Could Help Your Love Life,” author Kelsey McKinney discusses the joys and problems of spreading other people’s stories.

Martin is gifted at drawing out her guests, so I called her to discuss how she gets people past their rehearsed stories and how one person’s experience can speak to universal truths. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: How do you cultivate enough safety in the first minutes for someone to talk honestly?

A: There’s a power dynamic between interviewer and interviewee. I have notes; they don’t. If this is remote, I call from my professional-looking New York studio; they’re in their home. If this is in the New York Times offices, they’re walking past security and a newsroom. These dynamics contribute to that power imbalance. So, I’ll say, “You’re the expert on your life. You’ve lived it; I haven’t. I’m a curious participant in your storytelling of this moment.”

Me assuring them that they’re the expert isn’t assuring them that I won’t ask a tough question. I’ll guide us, but they’re the expert.

That spiel helps. It doesn’t take away the power dynamic. But it helps make the conversation more like a conversation than a probing.

Q: Are there cues that tell you a guest has shifted from reciting a story to processing an experience with you in real time?

A: A producer I worked with named Hans once described what he called the “look away.” Suppose someone’s locked in eye contact. Then you ask, “Describe your family dinner table when you were growing up.” They look away, and they’re no longer with you. That lack of presence is the cue that you’re on the right track.

We talk to people about some of the biggest moments of their lives. These are often stories that people have told a lot. They’ve processed it and incorporated it into their sense of self. That’s healthy and good. But there’s a way to tell a story too much. The grooves get set, and you fall back into them.

You sense when someone isn’t pausing. Often what jolts someone out of that is breaking in politely. Ask a sideways question. I like really simple questions, because that’s how people actually talk. Suppose someone’s describing a break-up without pausing. You can interrupt with, “Wait, were you scared?” You can ask, how was your body feeling? Did you stop walking? Did you sit down? Situating someone in a place can be helpful in breaking one groove and creating another.

Q: How do you balance being an empathetic listener with being an editor who needs to ensure an episode has a narrative through line?

A: That’s the question. Having great editors, producers and a team you trust is paramount.

Even though I’m talking all this talk about “it’s a conversation,” there’s also a specific narrative arc we’d like to achieve. We come to conversations really, really prepped. We aim for a conversational tone, but that’s the result of lots of work.

If I need someone to move on, and it’s at the beginning of the conversation, I let them go. But [later] I am not afraid to break in. I’ll say, “In this part, I’m imagining a quicker answer, because I really want to get to that part” or “I’m gonna pivot us right now.”

Q: I hear your pauses, laughter, sighs, and I love it all. Do you think deliberately about all of that?

A: Funny you should ask, because I’m working with my team on reacting vocally less. If there’s a steady stream of uh-huhs, you eventually taper it off, leaving the person you’re talking to wondering, “Is this not as good?” It’s a more confident interviewing style to embody a sense of listening and compassion and curiosity without needing to make a sound.

We’ve all had serious conversations, and some are just serious. But in some emotional conversations, something will come up, and you’ll laugh.

Q: I put off listening to your recent episode, “Ask Me About My Dead Son.” I didn’t want to go there. When I finally listened, I found it uplifting, though not sugarcoated. The laughter seemed natural and helped me enter the story.

A: When I heard what that story was about, I thought: unimaginable horror. That was not me inserting laughter where it wasn’t meant to be. That was [guest] Susie [Shaw], right? I was a receptive listener. And if she’s gonna laugh about how her son loved to eat meat sticks, then I’d laugh with her. Being a receptive listener allows for flexibility in the way real people talk.

Q: That episode sounded like one person’s story but it landed on universal ideas about grief. Why start with the personal story rather than the big idea?

A: If you start with broad generalities or sweeping assumptions, a listener might think, “I don’t think that applies to me.” But when you start from a place of, “This is exactly how it felt when my mom died” or, let’s do a happy one, “This is exactly how it felt when my kid was born,” from there, we can tease out not only the personal experience, but we can bring it to the place of “this is the big thing I was wrong about or that surprised me or helped me realize something.”

If someone starts a story with, “Hope means this to me,” you might think, “Well, hope means something different to me.” But when a person starts a story with, “There I was, on Kilimanjaro,” and then they bring it to a place of hope, not only have you gone on the journey with them, you’ve also subconsciously thought, “This is what this story means to me.” You’re leaning into a place of meaning-making, and the specific becomes universal.

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